Lloyds Bank is to close its Sussex House call centre in Brighton with the loss of almost 400 jobs, it announced today.
The Unite union said that coupled with earlier job losses, this meant 580 of the bank’s employees on the south coast in Sussex would be out of work.
The banking giant, which last year merged with HBOS, confirmed Sussex House would close in May, affecting 535 jobs.
But it said 162 employees would be redeployed, leaving a total reduction of 373 jobs.
Unite’s national officer Rob MacGregor said: “We are astounded that Lloyds Banking Group has today decided to cut 410 customer contact jobs.
“This announcement will effectively mean the closure of a significant office in the Brighton region.
“The result of this plan is that in just three weeks 580 Lloyds employees have lost their jobs in this small geographical region.
“Unite is alarmed about the consequence of this strategy by the Lloyds Banking Group. There have been in excess of 15,000 job losses announced since the formation of this organisation.”
David Nicholson, of Lloyds Banking Group’s retail division, said: “As part of our integration process, we have reviewed our contact centre sites to ensure that we are operating in the best possible way.
“We recognise that this is difficult news for our affected colleagues.
“We are committed to working closely with them to help them look for other opportunities within the group and elsewhere between now and May next year.”
Lloyds said it would try to achieve job losses through voluntary severance and making less use of contractors and agency staff, with compulsory redundancies a “last resort”.
This is the latest in a series of swingeing job cuts to hit Brighton. Last week, the University of Sussex announced it planned to cut 115 jobs to save £5million.
And Threshers announced it was to close its remaining seven stores in Brighton and Hove as part of the closure of 391 stores across the UK.
I’m flabbergasted: almost half the bank is publicly-owned – and I think the Government has a duty to step in and save the jobs, relocating some of the bank’s call-centre activities from India to Brighton to do so.
It might costs the bank a little more money in the short term, but the costs to the Government – and the fabric of our society – of mass unemployment are much, much higher.
Yet again the Government seems more interested in protecting its investments – and encouraging the banks to make as much money as they can – even at the cost of hundreds of jobs.